Pet Insurance Plans or just save monthly - what do you do?

[mickeysgal]

Do any of you carry pet medical insurance or do you just save monthly toward your vet bills? Or, do you not save at all and just wing it when those vet bills hit?

Is pet insurance worth it? We save monthly towards our office visits/shots/flea/heartworm med expenses, but would like to hear from others that have explored the pet insurance route.

 

[usnuzuloose]

Well my doggie had two tplo's the first one cost 3400.00. I asked my husband about getting ins for all 3 which I think was 179.00 a month. It also would have helped pay for reg shots and checkups. He waited to long. Four months later she needed the operation for the other leg 3700.00, and to boot we had to go to the emergency vet the night before and had to put the cat down 200.00. That ins would have worked I would have got 90% of that back. Well I guess we live and learn. Hope this helps. Ins I called was VIP. Jo

 

[bicker]

Averaged over all pets, insurance is generally going to be a bad deal. They insurers are in business to make profit, so that profit is basically the difference between how much the services provided to those pets costs and how much they charge the pet-owners. That's money that the pet-owners pay that doesn't go toward the cost of vet services.

Having said that, some folks would not be able to (either financially, or emotionally) afford $7100 in expenses in a single year. Now, the likelihood of facing that situation is very small, but that's little solace if you find yourself facing it. For folks who aren't prepared to, effectively, "self-insure", pet insurance provides a way of shifting the risk of the small probability off of the pet-owner and onto the insurer (but just keep in mind that you are actually paying money to relieve yourself of that risk).

 

[Pakey]

I do not have it but it certainly would have helped in my situation. I have two hairless Chinese cresteds; the 5 year old female never goes to the vet except for regular checkups. My 4 year old male is another story. He's on routine medication that costs about $80/month (not including the cost of the monthly visits to his opthamologist) plus he had a $4200 emergency surgery a few months ago when he ate a wooden toothpick.

I can afford the bills so I don't have a separate savings for them. If I could not afford it; I would save the money though. I believe that if you are going to have pets, you have to take care of them.

 

[usnuzuloose]

Yes the cost I endured was extreme. But if I didnt do it she would not be able to walk. If I thought about maybe I should of had them both done at the same time. Maybe I would have gotten a little bit of a break on the cost. But she is doing wonderful. Like I said I lived and learned. Jo

 

[cherylp3]

I have pet insurance through Embrace - I read all the reviews at
http://petinsurancereview.com/ - I'm not a saver but I like that they bill me monthly.
Its a piece of mind thing for me.

 

[erincon23]

We have a "wellness" plan through our vet ( a chain vet - -Banfield). It covers all shots, two yearly checkups, a certain number of items like bloodwork, teeth cleaning, and some other items, plus gives a discount on anything else we need (medications, procedures, etc). It's pretty reasonable -- less than $20/month for an elderly dog. But other than a small discount, it wouldn't cover operations, xrays, etc. Our dog has congestive heart failure (and I've been reading the thread about how to know if your dog is at the end, because I think ours is) and some other problems, and the diagnostic tests the vet has wanted to do aren't covered, and we can't afford to pay for them out of pocket, so they're not happening. (it doesn't matter what else is wrong with her, really, because the problems we know about would make it unwise to treat anything new -- treatment could kill her -- so there's no point in diagnosing anything else -- right now, we're just trying to keep her as comfortable as possible.)

 

[HOGFAN]

we do Banfield too-thru Petsmart. It seems like a decent plan.

 

[STLDisney_Freak]

I have a http://www.pawsitivesavings.com/ account that I put monthly into on a monthly basis for my pet expenses. Then I use the debit card to the account to pay at the vet.